3 Easy Steps to Plan Simple Shabbos Menus that Your Family Will Love

On Monday night, our babysitter asked my son what he wanted for dinner. Knowing that he was having leftovers for dinner he immediately began rambling his standard list, “Gefilte fish, chicken, rice, sweet potatoes and kugel.”

We didn’t actually have all of those items in the fridge at the time, but we had to laugh at how predictable our Shabbos menus have become.  We do not have the same menu every week, but there are definite themes and repeated ingredients that are used from week to week.

To make a variety of weekly menus I’ve streamlined our Shabbos menu planning process.  With only three easy steps you too will be making creative menus in a matter of minutes!  And just because the menus include variety, it doesn’t mean that they take hours to prepare.  In fact, most of my menus can be prepped within only one hour!

3 Steps to Plan Easy Shabbos Menus

Want to plan simple easy menus? Here are 3 easy steps to make it happen:

Don’t forget how helpful it is to have freezer friendly dishes.  Sometimes I’ll make a huge kugel and we’ll only eat half.  Instead of eating it during the week, I freeze it for another Shabbos!

After following these three simple steps, you will have a large repertoire of dishes to get you started.  Make sure to add new ideas and remove the ones that don’t work to keep your list current.

Tips to Make a List of Easy Dishes

Growing up we had the same exact food every Shabbos (unless we had company). Friday night was chicken, potatoes, sweet potatoes and string beans in the roaster. Shabbos lunch was gefilte fish and cholent. From week to week there were no surprises and we always looked forward to our Shabbos meals because the food was delicious.

So, while DH prefers variety, the themes within each of our Shabbos menus remain the same:

  1. Easy to make dishes (can chicken with duck sauce be called a recipe?)
  2. Ingredients my kids love to eat
  3. Food that will taste great on Monday night

For example, here is what we ate for the past two weeks:

Menu 1

Friday Night:

  • Crock-pot Beef
  • Rice
  • Roasted carrots

Shabbos Lunch:

Menu 2

Friday Night:

  • Turkey wings
  • Sweet potatoes
  • Couscous

Shabbos Lunch:

So, while these menus are different, all of the dishes contain many of the same ingredients, were easy to prepare and (most importantly) were foods that my kids eat!

Preparing a completely homemade meal in a short amount of time that your family will love does not have to be scary!  It’s completely doable.  Trust me- if I can do it, you can too!

Until next time,
Shaindy

Comments are closed.